


The Chances of Survival

by Ma_Kir



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Exegol, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, remembering, steadfast
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:21:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24001261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ma_Kir/pseuds/Ma_Kir
Summary: Despite the odds, C-3PO keeps going. And he remembers.May the Fourth be with you, my friends. Always.
Relationships: C-3PO & Anakin Skywalker, C-3PO & Han Solo, C-3PO & Leia Organa, C-3PO & Luke Skywalker, C-3PO & R2-D2, C-3PO & Shmi Skywalker, Padmé Amidala & C-3PO
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23





	The Chances of Survival

"What are you doing there, Threepio?"  
  
C-3PO regards Commander Dameron. He can see aspects of Captain Solo's characteristics in his demeanor, but he can tell the human is more affable in some ways. Certainly, to deal with a rambunctious unit like BB-8 he would need to be. The former stormtrooper FN-2187, Mr. Finn observes him with concern. And as for Mistress Rey ...   
  
For a few moments, the protocol droid finds his optics, perhaps even his central processor, recalling another time. With other organic companions. Mr. Finn's expression is reminiscent of Master Luke's, the confident set of Commander Dameron's shoulders that of Captain Solo's exaggerated swagger, and Mistress Rey ... The light in her eyes with its intensity, the sad determination reminds him so much of Princess Leia he feels like something inside of him has short-circuited.   
  
And BB-8. C-3PO, even after all this time, despite what he's said about the matter already, in spite of the decision that they've made -- that he has made -- is loathe to admit it. But the small droid makes him wish, to the Maker himself, that R2-D2 was here. For this moment. 

"Taking one last look." He replies, regarding all of them, seeing others from another age, another time, smiling back at him for one momentary lapse before his processors re-integrate and he sees his current companions one more time. "At my friends."   
  
Then the Anzellan droidsmith, Babu Frik, flips a switch inside of him, connected to the wires he has hooked up to his central processing unit. He visualizes a flood of information, of languages, and images, and binary, and a small shape reaching out its hand towards him from a grainy desert environment.   
  
And nothing more.   
  
*  
  
It's all happened so fast. C-3PO, human-cyborg relations, had introduced himself to R2-D2 before the astromech unit had inserted the data into his cortex. The little rust-bucket is beside himself with glee about the entire thing, ribbing him on just how "inefficient" his data storage actually is. 

R2-D2 will never let him live this down. 

They are on Exegol. The others in the Resistance, especially Acting-General Dameron, now-Commander Finn, and Mistress Rey were pleased to see him. C-3PO even had a greetings from Baron Calrissian. However, Chewbacca ... the Wookiee nearly crushed him into scrap metal in his embrace. As it was, it'd be a miracle if his fur didn't clog his joints and servo-motors. It is surface data to provide himself opportunity to process the other information provided him.   
  
No one else in the Resistance -- in the Restored Republic -- bothers the protocol droid as he totters through the remains of bulkheads and ruined structures. He should be concerned with the damage the static of Exegol's atmosphere might be having with his signal function, or how the sand will never get out of his chassis without a good oil bath.   
  
_An ... oil bath ... on Tatooine ..._  
  
There is much recall feedback in his central processing unit. He'd had opportunity to discuss the matter with R2. It transpired that not only did C-3PO regain his memories from before his reprogramming by Babu Frik, from his time in the Alliance's possession all the way to his accompaniment of the three other Resistance members, but it jogged other, dormant systems and programs that many believed had been rendered obsolete due to a previous memory-wipe.   
  
Now, C-3PO recalls all of his memories since the time of his first activation.   
  
He'd been ... cross with R2. He recalls the astromech whimpering. It's one of the few times R2 had ever been contrite about something. It's bad enough that the other droid could recall him being ... naked, while he couldn't, but the rest of it ...  
  
It feels as though it had all occurred simultaneously. That he had been activated just one day previous. He spoke with Master Anakin on Tatooine and the Jedi Temple. He served Senator Amidala ... Mistress Padme her favourite tea.That disturbing time his cortex had been placed on a battle droid chassis. Master Luke had given him an oil bath after purchasing him and R2 for the Lars Farm. Making caf for Princess Leia. Master Ben lifting him into the air with a gesture of his hand.   
  
The Clone Wars. The Rebellion. The Resistance. Everything. All at once. Just yesterday. Just now. Fifty systems rotations ago. 

Ostensibly, C-3PO was left here by Resistance High Command to aid in deciphering any remaining Final Order decryptions and information. The mechanisms preventing him from accessing the Sith language are still deactivated, and strangely this does not concern the protocol droid. It seems so inconsequential. So small now. They have attained victory. He has been made to understand that those horrid Sith Eternal cultists are all deceased by the battle here; their master, the former Emperor Palpatine, finally destroyed by Mistress Rey.   
  
And Master Ben.   
  
He finds himself in the wreckage of the _Steadfast_ , a Resurgent-class Star Destroyer of the First Order. It had been commanded by Allegiant General Enric Pryde, formerly of the Galactic Empire, yet it once housed not only the First Order High Command, but the quarters of Master Ben, styled Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, as well. It had been his last command vessel before ... 

He, too, was deceased.  
  
C-3PO isn't precisely sure what he is attempting to locate. Mistress Rey hadn't been here. Not long after the celebrations, she had left to locations unknown, under obvious emotional distress from the protocol droid's own observations. He had seen it before in Princess Leia, however much she attempted to suppress it, just as Mistress Padme had done, and Mistress Shmi ...   
  
The protocol droid isn't precisely sure how to properly define the feedback cycle he is experiencing. R2 had told him to pace himself, to let his sensors and internal processing synchronize and catch up to each other's frequencies, but C-3PO would have none of it. He has duties to which he must attend. As needs must. 

This loop continues within his systems, humming static background noise almost equaling the harsh environs of this world, before he locates ... an object.   
  
It is badly compromised. Damaged. The protocol droid is not a demolitions specialist unit, or even a mechanic, but he can see that the metal of the object in question has suffered fire damage, indentation from a severe fall, or velocity against another hard object. A blank, black visor, smeared with dust, cracked in one eye regards his optic sensors lifelessly from the ruins of the once pristine, starkly artificial white chamber with which it was housed.   
  
C3-PO had been made privy to the records from the droid brain aboard the Steadfast, particularly from Master Ben's private manifest. From his collection. C3-PO, however, didn't require access to this database to know what this object is. He had seen it personally. First-hand.   
  
His memory-banks tell him it resembles an ancient Sith battle droid's cortex, but C-3PO knows better. He knows that there had been an organic component underneath this device, this helmet. He knew who it was. And, now, he knows who it used to be.   
  
Who _he_ used to be.   
  
A red arm, and a golden one reach down. Servo-motors whir as C-3PO gingerly bends down.   
  
_Human-cyborg relations ..._  
  
C-3PO brings the damaged helmet up to his optics. He feels the information and data integrate and coalesce into his central processing unit as the full implications of this moment fully reach their inevitable calculations. He recollects Captain Solo leaving to Starkiller Base, and Princess ... General Organa becoming unsteady, her focus glassy-eyed, disoriented. Grieving. Lost in his own reprogramming, he recalls General Organa's adjutant informing them of her death.   
  
He recalls ... Tatooine. The slave quarters. Then the Farmstead. Mistress Shmi had been taken by Sand People, the same Tusken Raiders that removed his arm in the Jundland Wastes with Master Luke ...   
  
Master Anakin at the Jedi Temple. On Mustafar. Then Poliss Massa and Mistress Padme dying at childbirth. And Master Anakin was nowhere in sight, even when he and R2 took her unconscious form into her ship before Master Kenobi ...   
  
Then darkness.  
  
 _I am C-3PO, human cyborg relations ..._  
  
Alderaanian diplomatic functions. His sojourns with R2 across the galaxy before returning to Bail Organa and Princess Leia. And that dark figure.   
  
The dark figure that dominated galactic diplomatic functions. Who loomed over the pristine atmosphere of Cloud City. Who surveyed his own dismembered parts .... parts. _His parts had been showing._  
  
C-3PO processes this. There is so much he has not computed. So much that he doesn't understand. R2 promised to take him through it again, should he need the aid. The sadness from that bucket of bolts had been palpable, especially when the protocol droid considered that the astromech had been carrying this data for decades. C-3PO considers the object in his hands. He recalls merely wanting to fulfill his function. He didn't want to go on any adventures. He wasn't built for travel, or combat. Certainly not for espionage, or rebellion.   
  
But he'd done all of those things. And more.   
  
And all this time, despite everything or because of it, it had all come back to the object in his hands, and the person who wore it. Who tinkered so much with droids that he might as well have been one himself. And he had, in the end. It had all come back full circle. Every organic C-3PO had been in the possession of had been related to that organic, to that human, to that man.   
  
And it occurs to him. In R2's company, they had almost always been around those of Master Anakin's blood. They had been with family.   
  
C-3PO recalls Crait. He remembers the impossibility of visualizing Master Luke as though he were several decades in the past, and he left no visible affects on the terrain through which he maneuvered to face Master Ben, and the First Order. He had been told, later, that Master Luke had been in a distant system, on Ahch-To when the Battle began, yet he could register his energy signature and the presence of his weight on his shoulder. Just as Master Ani ...  
  
Perhaps, just perhaps, through C-3PO's anthropological database, and his own experiences being levitated over the ground, and from his own storytelling to generations, there might be more after the cessation of organic life than he had originally perceived. The odds have already been beaten by this family, many times over. If so ...  
  
The protocol droid looks down at the helmet. Then, as though interfacing with it, C-3PO brings it to his cortex. There is a clink of metal meeting metal.   
  
"Thank you." He says. "Maker."   
  
For a few moments, the protocol droid wonders if his auditory sensors are malfunctioning as there seems to be a whisper just behind him as he turns around, and toddles back to base, to keep R2 out of further mischief. 


End file.
